Ed Luce: belief

Transcript context

…Neil Ferguson concluded his book “The West and the Rest” with the idea that is the pusillanimity of Western democracies is to blame for the decline of Western ideas. What do you think about that? He was talking about the over‑consumption and deficit spending, I think partly, right? I don’t really agree with that. I don’t agree with that at all. I think when people talk about the massive American debt, when we look at, what, 75 percent of GDP, look at the publicly‑held debt, I don’t think by historic standards that’s remotely alarming. I think, in fact, we should have had more stimulus and had more counter‑cyclical fiscal policy in the last decade than we have had. I think the German answer ‑‑ and here’s where I would criticize the German sado‑managerist approach has actually been very damaging to Europe, particularly to the Club Med group of European countries, so I’m not sure I agree with Neil Ferguson. He changes his argument about once a year, so I’ll either catch up with him, or he’ll catch up with me. [laughter] Why do African Americans poll as being so optimistic about the future of this country?”…

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